Solving the Puzzle of Your IoT Solution: Integrated Features

As Internet of Things flourishes, resources and knowledge have become more readily available, allowing even enthusiasts to create their own IoT solution at home. For some, connecting one or two devices to an IoT platform has become a hobby. There is no doubt that this practice can also be beneficial for industrial IoT applications. With the addition of more devices however, we see more strain and issues within the system. So, what can you do when seeking to build a scalable IoT system?

Amongst the ecosystem components from our past blog segments, there will be features that need to span across several of the components to create valuable services and tools for your team and customers. This is necessary in order to promote reuse, interoperability, and extensibility as your business grows. These types of services and tools help you transition from one connected product to many, from one team to many, and from one market to many.

• Device Provisioning: Your device will need to be provisioned, so that it will have knowledge of the platform to which it will connect; the back end will also need to enable the platform to handle the data the device sends to it. This means some sort of custom code on the device or embedded in the chip itself is needed, as well as an IoT platform with support to accept the device communication. As you extend from one IoT connected device to many, the device provisioning system will need to handle an array of device models and configurations.
• Device Management: Once your device is in the field rendering itself useful, you will need a way to ensure that you are able to manage device status, deploy firmware updates, and control versioning, so you won’t have to create custom tools for each product. It is most useful when updates can be rolled out simultaneously to all devices or dynamically to different groups based on information like region or device firmware version. As you launch additional follow-on devices and projects, your device management solution will need to be flexible enough to cope with a variety of hardware types, firmware versions, and device groups.
• Application Hosting: Common, reusable tools and processes for static application file hosting enable a full application to be hosted within your IoT platform. This also enables follow-on application derivatives and variants to serve new or adjacent markets.
• Customizable APIs: Simplify your IoT solution design and create a tailored approach to device data interaction so that you can decide exactly what context, application logic, and device/user access make sense for your solution.
• Integrated Roles & Permissions Management: Integrated user services will provide a permissions scheme that handles authentication, management, and role definition that can be built into application permissions to reduce complexity and ensure security in IoT systems.
• Standardization Tools: Reuse of common components like hardware, integrations, and application frameworks will enable an IoT product deployment strategy that your entire organization can leverage to create consistency and minimize duplication, while maintaining the flexibility to customize.

For a complete description of the integrated features, download the full white paper below or contact one of our IoT experts to discuss your solution.